Philip Parvin & Declan McHugh, Hansard Society, write about citizens' political disengagement and democratic reform by supporting the resilience of civil society, for eGov monitor
British citizens are not getting involved in politics in anything like the numbers that many in the political class would like. While turnout at the 2005 general election showed a slight increase on the historic low recorded four years earlier, the improvement, as Geoff Hoon conceded in a previous edition of the eGov monitor, owed more to the wider use of postal voting (not without its own problems) than any political awakening. Moreover, political disengagement is not merely manifest in low electoral participation.
As noted in the recent Hansard Society publication, MPs and Politics in Our Time, only a tiny fraction of the population is affiliated to a political party and evidence suggests anti-party sentiment is at an all time high. Relatedly, MPs are generally viewed in negative terms, frequently characterised as ‘poodles’ and ‘sheep’ (despite the fact that the current Parliamentary Labour Party is among the most rebellious of the post-war era).
Yet, at the same time that traditional representative institutions and actors are declining in popularity, single issue groups are gaining in membership and one-off campaigns attract tremendous interest. This suggests that disengagement from formal political institutions is not simply a result of apathy (though there is an element of that) but rather a consequence of people rejecting conventional politics as a worthwhile means to express their views and influence decisions. Hence, many argue that the democratic system must be re-configured in ways which tap into this apparent desire for a new and more responsive type of politics that gives the public greater decision-making power. Increase the opportunities for engagement and ‘empower’ citizens so that they might gain ‘ownership’ of decisions made in their name, we are told, and people will return to civic and political life.
In our Hansard Society pamphlet, Neglecting Democracy, we acknowledge that British society is experiencing profound change, to which the political system needs to respond. But we argue that the answer is not to remove decision making power from representative institutions and devolve it down to ‘the people’. Democratic reform does not simply mean giving the citizen body more of a direct input into decision making or increasing opportunities to get involved. People need to be able to communicate their concerns effectively and to enter democratic debates as and when they feel the need, but we should not think that merely encouraging them to do so (and indeed, configuring our political institutions in ways which require them to) will solve our democratic malaise and enrich democratic governance in Britain.
As we point out, the argument for greater direct democracy rests on the conflation of two very distinct ideas; namely, the good of democratic debate and the good of democratic decision making. These are not the same thing and while widening democratic debates to as many people as possible is beneficial, devolving decision making power down to the citizen body is potentially very bad, and should be avoided.
Expressing this view in the current climate of political debate is practically heresy. The claim that problems with our democratic system need to be resolved by providing more power to the people to get involved is now so ingrained in the political psyche that it seems unquestionable; any argument to the contrary is viewed as somehow rooted in elitist views about the inability of ‘common people’ to have valid opinions about politics, or the desire to trample upon the needs and interests of minority groups. The dominant view is that the key to resolving social and political exclusion is to place decision making power more firmly in the hands of the people as a whole. The problem with this is that, in so doing, you may well make the plight of the excluded, the poor and the marginalised worse.
We at the Hansard Society argue instead for the widening and enrichment of democratic debates among citizens – and see information technology as a vital means of achieving that – but for the consolidation of decision making power within reflective, responsible, and legitimate representative institutions. A thriving civic life can empower representatives to do their jobs more effectively and can make them more informed about the issues at stake. We should think twice before weakening or displacing our representative system by affording decision making power to the wider public. Indeed, improving and renewing existing representative institutions offers the best chance of stimulating wider political participation while protecting the rights of marginalised and excluded groups.
Neglecting Democracy and MPs and Politics in Our Time are both available as a free download from the Hansard Society website:
www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications/recent/neglecting_democracy
www.hansardsociety.org.uk/mps_in_our_time
The Hansard Society is an independent, non-partisan organisation, which operates across the political spectrum to strengthen the democratic process and improve the relationship between the public, elected representatives and political institutions.
